My father Ken Mitchell was buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio August, 2011. There is another Woodland Cemetery where my grandmother is buried and which is located in Woodland, California. I first heard of Woodland, California when I read Dad’s military records, the records we finally received a month before his passing that enabled my mother to give him the military funeral we wanted for him and that we felt he deserved. Dad always told us that he was born and raised in the worst neighborhood in Oakland from which he escaped. His parents, our grandparents, were Irish immigrants from Cork, Ireland and had been terrible failures in their new country. Dad left high school without graduating. His football coach signed the enlistment papers, and he entered the Navy a year after Pearl Harbor. He served until 1952 when he was honorably discharged and found his way to Iowa where he met and married my mother in less than five months. The following is a story about my discovery of Woodland, California, Dad’s true childhood home, and the community and people who loved him and thought him dead for over a half a century.
Below is Dingle Elementary where my father attended kindergarten thru 8th grade. It’s a National Historical Site.
Below is one of the movie theaters my grandfather managed.
Woodland farmland
